Construction Tele-robotic System with Virtual Reality (CG Presentation of Virtual robot and Task Object using Stereo Vision System)

A remote-control robotic system using bilateral control is useful for performing restoration in damaged areas, and also in extreme environments such as space, the seabed, and deep underground. In this study, we investigated a tele-robotics system for a construction machine. The system consists of a servo-controlled construction robot, two joysticks for operating the robot from a remote place, and a 3-degrees-of-freedom motion base. The operator of the robot sits on the motion base and controls the robot bilaterally from a remote place. The role of the motion base is to realistically simulate the motion of the robot. In order to improve the controllability of the system, we examined (1) the master and slave control method between joysticks and robot arms (Yamada et al., 1999, 2003a), (2) a presentation method for the motion base (Zhao et al., 2002, 2003), and (3) the visual presentation of the task field for an operator (Yamada et al., 2003b). Because the visual presentation is the information most essential to the operator, in this study we focused on the presentation method of the operation field of a remote place. The world’s first remote control system was a mechanical master-slave manipulator called ANL Model M1 developed by Goertz (Goertz, 1952). Since its introduction, the field of teleoperation has expanded its scope. For example, tele-operation has been used in the handling of radioactive materials, sub-sea exploration, and servicing. Its use has also been demonstrated in space, construction, forestry, and mining. As an advanced form of teleoperation, the concept of “telepresence” was proposed by Minsky (Minsky, 1980). Telepresence enables a human operator to remotely perform tasks with dexterity, providing the user with the feeling that she/he is present in the remote location. About the same time, “telexistence”, a similar concept, was proposed by Tachi (Tachi et al., 1996). Incidentally, practical restoration systems using tele-operation have been tested in Japan, because volcanic or earthquake disasters occur frequently. For example, unmanned construction was introduced in recovery work after the disastrous eruption of Mount Unzen Fugen Dake in 1994 and was used in a disastrous eruption on Miyakejima, which was made uninhabitable due to lava flows and toxic volcanic gas. In these tele-operation systems, however, simple stereo video image feedback was adopted; there remains some room for improvement in the details of telepresence.